Michael Hibbard

All about the books I write, along with random thoughts, and babbling.

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Change – Promised Yet Always Undelivered

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability. – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Back under the frayed quilt of politics we go, listening to the heads bobble and talk. Every single candidate heralds a change. Change in taxes, change in jobs, change in our way of life, change in our dealings with other countries. Words Words Words! We never change, and it’s because we are resistant to change. We feel change is unnerving and uncomfortable. But the reality is, everything else is in a constant state of change. It is a fundamental principle of the universe. All things change, and fight as we might, we cannot stop it.

I bring all this up because I’d like to start a new movement. I don’t want to sit in a park and complain about the haves and the have-nots. I don’t want someone to give me something for nothing. I don’t want to protest. I don’t want to war. I just want to commit to bringing about change, for better or worse. We must change, and when I say “we” I mean every single living being on this planet. We cannot continue forward in the manner we have been conducting ourselves. We must find new ways of bringing about a global change, because if we dont the planet will do it for us — as it has countless times before.

A recent study I read, found here, has some extremely interesting and compelling arguments about the current state of the Earth’s Geomagnetic poleshift, which has already begun. For those of you unfamiliar, a geomagnetic poleshift is the natural process of the magnetic poles, both north and south, moving from their current position to some other position on the planet. This is caused by the constant churning and spinning of the molten iron that makes up the Earth’s core. The magnetosphere is the most important aspect of the Earth’s geomagnetic processes because it is greatly responsible for reducing the harmful particles that are constantly stream from the Sun to the Earth. Think of the solar winds as a very hot hairdryer, and the magnetosphere as a hat. If you take your hat off, your head will get really hot if pointed at the same spot for too long. But if you keep the hat on, the hat absorbs a great deal of the heat, allowing your head to get warm, but not too warm.

The Earth’s magnetosphere becomes very weak when it is in the process of switching. This means that we will received larger amounts of harmful solar radiation than normal, and this has detrimental affects on the planet, such as increased volcanic activity, bizarre weather patterns, increased earthquake activity and even social impacts as all living things on the planet are attuned to this magnetic field. There is no question of “if” this will happening, it “is” happening now, and I think if everyone stops for a moment and looks around, you’ll realize that things are changing on the planet, but we are too absorbed in our petty lives and differences to see the forest through the trees.

There are so many other reasons for us to begin entertaining a Movement of Change. The gaps between the middle class and the upper class are growing at alarming rates. Wars and discontent breed and fester like a global virus. We have become lazy. We have become greedy. And all the while, we have run ahead foolishly without pay attention to the cliff up ahead. We must begin now, and all of us have a responsibility to get the word out.

As humans, we crave social acceptance, but also want to remain individuals — there is nothing wrong with that as long as we keep in mind that we need balance. However, we should not only do things for social acceptance, because that is not the “right” mindset. We should do things that make us feel good about ourselves, yet also improve the world around us. For instance, one very small thing that we all tend to forget is the simple principle of causality, or cause and effect. It is at work every single moment of your day. Everything cause you initiate has some sort of effect. I have seen this principle at work when I am at my office. I have seen how one person’s mood, particularly a bad mood, slowly affects everyone’s mood. One simple word said in anger, can cause a chain reaction that eventually spreads like wildfire from the office, to the gas station, to the restaurant and finally back to one’s home. Thinking that your mood is your own is a foolish assumption. Each of us is a ripple in the pond of spacetime. So one form of change is to be more cognizant of how you treat others daily, and how you are treated. If someone is in a bad mood, it is always your choice to be affected, or try to reverse the process.

But this is something we should all know, and we do, we just allow other things to keep us from being sucked in. I have found that when I wake up in the morning and remind myself, “People are going to try to affect you today”, I am able to remain in a good mood all day, despite how people act towards me. It is so easy to get frustrated. But also, I have to constantly remind myself of the things that truly matter, and the things that are truly a problem. When I start to feel myself fall into a melancholy state, I stop and say, “Hmm, is this really a significant problem?” and more times than not, I find that what I was worrying about was really quite silly. This is not to say that there are not real problems in the world, and we are all facing difficult times. The only way we can change the world is to focus on the things that really are a problem.

It’s no surprise that we are so upset all the time. Just watch ten minutes of the news and you’ll see how we are constantly and relentlessly bombarded by bad news. Here’s a neat little experiment you can try for yourself — next time you are watching the news, count the number of “negative” stories you hear versus the “positive” stories you hear. When I tried this, I found that for every 5 or 6 negative stories, there was only 1 or 2 positive stories. Also, the negative stories were much more emphasized in dramatic, for example one negative story was a triple homicide and the only positive story was a local restaurant opening. Bad news sells so much better than good news and for the life of me I do not understand why. So it makes me wonder, can we really ever trust any of the stories we hear on the news — is our world really this depressive? I don’t think so.

So how do we change all this? First we have to start with ourselves. From now until November we are going to be bombarded with ads, debates, speeches and road shows centered on the Presidency. We’re going to hear all sorts of promises that will be broken — yes, they are always broken. We want to believe, and they know we want to believe, so it all comes down to who is more of a “glad-handed-dandy”. In the end, it is painfully obvious that the politicians we elect are only interested in one thing — status quo. So we have to begin by taking a long hard look at ourselves, are we reflected in the mirror of our own politics? Yes, unfortunately we are. But the good news here is that we can break that mirror and get us a whole new way of looking at ourselves. Its time to vote “none of the above”, because we dont’ have any good choices this time around. Let us stop praying for someone to save us and focus on saving ourselves.

In my opinion, change starts with me and it starts with you. After you read this, be nice to the next person you see — tell them you value them as a friend, buy them a cup of coffee, tell them a joke or anything you can think of. I guarantee the rest of your day will feel great because you’ve started an effect, that while fleeting, will travel far and wide. Its more than “pay it forward”, because you’re not just anonymously doing something nice. Do something nice because you want the world to be better, not because you’ll get a pat on the back.

We have so many erroneous views of one another as we have been told for a very long time that one person is better than another person for any number of reasons. No one is better than anyone else. We all come into the world the same way, and we will all leave the world in the same way. All of us are scared and worried about things to come, and the uncertainty of the future. We are all the same at the most fundamental level. So really, the only thing you need to know to live a good life is to remember – I am you and you are me.